[nmglug] Setup for Qwest's Actiontec wireless modem

[Sam Noble]

On Wed, Sep 26, 2007 at 04:15:44PM -0700, VA wrote:
> I don't want to reinvent the wheel;  can someone help me with getting this modem to work? I talked to Qwest a couple of times and they want to troubleshoot on the wireless settings with Ubuntu 7.04. 
> 
> I have an Orinoco wireless PCMCIA card that works at several coffee shops, but I can't get it to work at home. 

So is the only problem the wireless? Does everything work fine if you
plug in with an ethernet cable?
There was a common problem (you can see several discussions in this
lists archives over the years.) with qwest/actiontec that the actiontec
would not work as a DNS forwarder, but it's dhcp server told your
computer to use the actiontec for DNS. If you suspect that your getting
connected properly but just can't get to any internet sites, try hand
editing /etc/resolv.conf and replacing the nameserver IP with one of
qwest's 205.171.3.65 or opendns.com's 208.67.222.222

> I have an Actiontec GT701-WG modem. 
> The wireless network is enabled (wireless green light on modem is on).
> ESSID is set to name of computer.

You can set this to whatever you like, it's like the 'name' of the
wireless network, at coffee shops the ssid is usually the name or
initials of the coffee shop. Setting it to the name of the computer won't
automatically create any kind of association (probably you know this
already but, you know, just in case.)

> WEP is enabled, set to 64-bit and the WEP code is 10 digits.
> I reset to 802.11b/g mode, just in case (the modem is a 802.11b).

Wep should not be a problem at all anymore, but for troubleshooting why
don't we turn it off.

> I didn't change any other settings (Port=1812, Group Key Interval=3600). 
> 
> What else can I do?  Thanks.

Tell us more about how you're trying to connect, and what happens, I'll
guess that you're using network-manager, which is the default in Ubuntu,
when you left-click on the nm-applet does your actiontec's ssid show up
in the list? What happens when you click on the name? One green dot, one
grey, or two grey? Does a dialog pop-up to enter the wep key? (I've had
trouble with that dialog popping up but somehow not getting in the
forground, so it's hidden behind my other windows.)

Also once you've tried to connect, send the output of:

$sudo iwconfig
or
$sudo iwconfig <wireless_device>

if you know the name of your wireless device.

You could also bring the modem with you to the next glug meeting.

sam